Apple Q4 2009 conference call liveblog and fiscal results

Apple's fourth quarter fiscal results are out and we're preparing to liveblog …

Apple's fiscal results are out and they are, as expected, quite good. The company reported revenue of $9.87 billion compared to $7.9 billion in the year ago quarter. Apple sold 3.05 million Macs this quarter reflecting a 17 percent increase from last year and 10.2 million iPods, an eight percent decrease. 7.4 million iPhones were sold, reflecting a seven percent increase from Q4 2008. Our liveblog of the conference call will begin at 5pm Eastern Time, so stick around to read the comments from Apple execs live.

Because its much easier to make such a widget with comparable functions in Flash than in Ajax?

But wow Apple is really raking it in. Having a consistent strategy that is actually supported by most parts of a company really is a nice thing to have.

(Should be a lesson to some of their competitors that are more defined by turf wars and short-short term results. Hell I intimately know a company that is so fucking focused on the next quarter results that it doesn't care if it cripples the company 2-3 years from now. And this mentality can not only be seen at the top but trickles down to all departments who wouldn't dare to do something terrible like focus on the next year or work together with others if it doesn't enhance the results of the own department or division.

Are you sure that it's $9.87 billion of profit, and not revenue? Because according to Engadget, they pulled in $9.87 billion of revenue, and $1.67 billion of profit this quarter, which sounds a lot more believable than nearly $10 billion of profit for a single quarter.

[Comment From Christopher Jenkins]"joesteel, Given that they've established that 13 inch can be "pro" too, they can use dedicated solutions a la 9400M or 4330. It depends how much gaming performance matters to them as a selling point."

That's not what I was getting at. So much of Mac OS X leverages the power of the GPU, not just for games. My question has nothing to do with running gaming.

There was a very good reason Apple opted to switch from Intel's chipsets to Nvidia's. They are saving a money, and power, uses Nvidia solutions over Intel. Having to switch back will impact component costs and component supply as well as unit performance. Mostly impacting their portable systems and margins on portable products.

"Because its much easier to make such a widget with comparable functions in Flash than in Ajax?"

Why on Earth do you need either? Liveblogging was doing perfectly well before some doofuses decided it all needed to be "real-time", which of course actually makes the commentary twice as hard to read.

Originally posted by Jsteel2001:That's not what I was getting at. So much of Mac OS X leverages the power of the GPU, not just for games. My question has nothing to do with running gaming.

There was a very good reason Apple opted to switch from Intel's chipsets to Nvidia's. They are saving a money, and power, uses Nvidia solutions over Intel. Having to switch back will impact component costs and component supply as well as unit performance. Mostly impacting their portable systems and margins on portable products.

This is true. However, remember than Intel used to sell three chips to Apple - the CPU, GMCH/MCH and IOHub. Now they sell two chips - CPU (with the integrated GMCH) and the IOHub. Yet based on the prices posted around the internet, the CPU price didn't go up (still roughly $230 and $330). Now what prices OEMs pay is another story, but the $30-50 Apple used to pay for that GMCH is now rolled into the CPU at no additional cost. The question is what can Apple get for that $30-50 in terms of kit for a discrete GPU (which is still possible with Arrandale since it has a x16 PCIE). I would guess that they could probably get a Nvidia GT230M and 256MB of RAM, though thats purely speculation based on things like how much desktop PCIE cards sell for, and what other costs go into those prices (if Nvidia is selling a GT210 512MB at retail for $49, and the GT210 is 40nm and about as powerful as whats in the 9400M, something three times as powerful, half the RAM, and none of the things like large PCB development (just whatever it takes to put it on a MBP logic board), retail packaging, overhead, etc come into play.

The worldwide PC market has suffered its first negative year-over-year growth this decade. US shipments saw a slight decline, much smaller than last quarter, but Apple has taken a huge hit to its impressive growth since 2006.By Chris Foresman | Last updated April 16, 2009 2:03 PM CT"

So much for that bit of foretelling the future. Some people are not suited to their self proclaimed titles.